Individual's Exposure and Emotional Response to Visual Impact of Particulate Matter Pollution: A Psychophysiological Study

摘要

As a leading risk factor for respiratory and coronary disease in China, air pollution has been studied extensively from physical health perspective. However, it is gradually recognized that exposure to air pollution also exert massive adverse impacts on individual's mental health. Particulate matter pollution (e.g. PM_(2.5)) is perceived as one of the most harmful air pollutants by Chinese lay public. High-concentration and large-scale PM pollution can damage visibility seriously, thus evoke individual's negative emotions. In this study, we administered a psychophysiological study to quantify association between individual exposure and emotional response to PM pollution. Participants were instructed to view a series of photos taken at the same site and occasion but with different PM_(2.5) concentrations. The images were mixed with pictures selected from IAPS (International Affective Picture System) in case of fatigue. Three self-report scales on basic dimension of emotion (i.e. valence, arousal and motivation) were rated by participants after viewing each photo. Moreover, their psychophysiological signals, including skin conductance responses, electrocardiogram, electromyogram, were also recorded during the whole experiment. Obvious but diverse trends of different emotion indicators were observed. A 10% increase of PM_(2.5) concentrations was associated with a 0.07 decrease of valence scores. Arousal scores, however, dropped down sharply when PM_(2.5) concentration increased from 11 to 50ug/m~3, and tended to be quite stable when the number exceeded 50ug/m~3. Physiological responses indicating negative emotion status were significantly stronger if PM_(2.5) concentrations were higher than 50μg/m~3. We conclude the policy implications revealed from our study, and discuss the feasibility for further applying this novel method to measure individual's emotional reactions towards various environmental risks.